Teacher the victim, says sex-case teen

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Karen Ellis and husband Stephen at the Melbourne County Court yesterday.Photo: Angela Wylie

A schoolboy who had a six-and-a-half-week sexual liaison with a
teacher when he was 15 has told a court he was not a victim of the
illicit affair.

In a statement tendered to the County Court yesterday, the
teenager described 37-year-old teacher Karen Louise Ellis as the
victim of the case.

Judge John Smallwood said that from reading this statement it
appeared the teenager, now 16, and who was in court yesterday, did
not consider their sexual relationship to be a criminal
offence.

"The victim in the legal sense is saying 'I'm not victim at all;
if anyone's a victim, it's her'," the judge said.

Ellis, who was a physical education teacher at a northern
suburbs school, has pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual
penetration of a child under 16.

The married mother of three has admitted having unprotected sex
with the year 10 student six times at her Eltham North home between
October 10 and November 24 last year.

In a pre-sentencing hearing, her husband Stephen testified that
his work as a self-employed plumber had placed their relationship
under pressure.

"When you're travelling away quite frequently you tend to lose
touch a little bit of your marriage," he said. "She sometimes had
indicated that I did not show enough affection towards her."

Mr Ellis said the couple were now doing their best "for our
children's sake".

"I'm back at home now and hopefully we can make a go of it," he
said. "She's been a fantastic mother all these 13 years. I just
hope it can all be finished and we can go back to a normal
life."

Defence counsel Brian Bourke urged Judge Smallwood not to impose
any immediate jail time, pointing to his client's lack of prior
convictions and the needs of her children, including one with
serious health problems. Mr Bourke said Ellis had already been
punished by the loss of her job and the wide media coverage of the
case.

But the prosecution has called for an immediate jail term,
describing Ellis' behaviour as a gross breach of trust similar to
that of disgraced tennis coach Gavin Hopper. Hopper was jailed in
August for a maximum of 31/2 years after being convicted of
sexually abusing a teenage schoolgirl while he was a physical
education teacher at Wesley College in the 1980s.

Prosecutor Kieran Gilligan quoted from Hopper's sentencing
judge, Graeme Crossley, who described the level of trust breached
in a teacher-student relationship as greater than other
relationships. "Consent is not a defence to these counts," Mr
Gilligan said.

Judge Smallwood said such a teacher-student relationship was a
"fundamental evil" and almost a perfect example of a crime against
the community.

He said a custodial sentence was inevitable, but that a wholly
suspended jail term was within the range of options open to
him.